


a soul half divided

by aukusti



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Akechi Goro Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 20:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21087179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aukusti/pseuds/aukusti
Summary: There was no rush; there was never any rush, not with him. Every day came with little secrets, gifts he felt he was being given even if the gifter wasn't aware he was giving them. Time, he had discovered, was something that was no longer running out.(day 5 of shuake week 2k19: childhood/adulthood)





	a soul half divided

Akechi Goro’s childhood is something that existed only in theory, something lacking concrete evidence to prove whether or not it had actually happened. He assumes he was part of a childhood, perhaps not just his own, and emerged from it a fragmented child and went on to become an even more fragmented teenager.

Despite that, he knows he lived through _something_ as he grew up, a _something_ that weighed on his subconscious enough to tear screams from his throat in the dead of night, a _something_ that made him live in the shadows of a man he despised with every ounce of his being, a _something_ that convinced him to kill the only person that had ever seen him for who he was.

And that someone couldn't be just anyone, it had to be Akira, with words that soothed and eyes so sharp he felt he was being consumed whole. Akira, who looked past the betrayal and hurt because he understood, who made him feel like maybe it was okay they hadn't met sooner because they were safer in the present.

It was raining outside. Goro watched the droplets that became clusters streak down their living room window, the grey sky stretching out far beyond the place he called home.

“—swear I checked the weather forecast last week,” Akira called from the kitchen, emerging moments later with two mugs with steam rising from them. He extended one to Goro, a gift from Ann from one of her shopping trips in Shibuya in the shape of a cat. He took it gratefully.

Akira nursed his own, just a plain blue one Goro had bought once to prove a point, although neither of them remembers what point had been made. “I swear I did.”

“That’s okay,” Goro said, because it was. He had learned that many things had to be okay, because they just _were_. “We can go out whenever it clears up.”

Akira huffed. “Futaba’s going to kill us.”

“Yeah, she's going to kill us.” Goro tried to hide his smile by taking a sip of his drink, memories of Leblanc surfacing with it. “She's with Ann, right?”

Putting his drink down on the small table in front of them, Akira flopped back onto the couch cushions and sighed the way he did when Goro convinced him to let him have the television remote. “Yeah, they're together. Ann texted me saying they got caught in the rain anyway, so I guess it's okay.”

Goro hummed. It had taken a while for the former Thieves to warm up to his presence again, uncensored this time, but if there was someone he spoke to more than Akira, it was Ann. “Will you send my regards? I hope she took an umbrella.”

Akira sniffled. “I think you like her more than you like me sometimes.”

“Of course I do,” he said simply. Akira sighed loudly again, rolling over until he was pressed against Goro’s side. “She's great.” He leaned forward to put his own mug down, wrapping an arm around Akira the moment he burrowed closer to him.

“Great,” Akira mumbled into his chest. “_I’m_ great.”

Goro smiled, another thing he learned that could come without ulterior motive. “You're great too.”

“Greater.” Akira nuzzled his face against Goro’s shoulder, and he wondered what type of cat he'd be. “I'm your boyfriend.”

Humming again, he lifted his hand to card through Akira’s hair. There was no rush; there was never any rush, not with him. Every day came with little secrets, gifts he felt he was being given even if the gifter wasn't aware he was giving them. Time, he had discovered, was something that was no longer running out.

After having been presumed dead for a year and a half after the engine room, he landed in the care of Yongenjaya’s own backdoor doctor, and has no recollection of the time he ceased to exist in the world.

Takemi, Akira would later note, was probably his form of an angel, however standoffish she might've been. Goro refused to confirm or deny his claim, even if he had always secretly thanked her for calling Akira when he became fully lucid instead of the police. He had also thanked her in as little words he could, the only way he knew how to at the time, before she told him if he ever landed in her office again, half-dead or not, she'd finish the job herself.

It had been a sensible acquaintanceship.

He could feel Akira’s breaths coming in slower now, warm puffs of air heating his neck. He moved his hand from Akira’s hair to wrap back around him, and as Akira tried to press them together even more, Goro’s heart lurched the way it did whenever his boyfriend reached for him, as if it were a reflex that had been ingrained in his being since they laid eyes on each other.

There wasn't anything Goro felt he could've offered Akira, even if he insisted otherwise. “Every day,” Goro had told him once, pressing feather light kisses to Akira’s tear stained face after he kept waking up from dreams he knew he had been the cause of. “Every day, I will make it up to you.”

Trying to make good on his promise hadn't been easy. It had anything but, in fact, riddled with pleading from both parties involved, many days spent not talking to anyone (Goro), sleepless nights (Akira), a broken plate once (both of them, over something admittedly silly).

It still _wasn't_ easy, not by any measure, but the calm that had creeped up on Goro and blanketed his life had yet to shift. When he looked at Akira, he no longer saw him bruised and defeated in an interrogation room, didn't see him at the end of the barrel of a pistol he wielded.

When Goro looked at Akira, he saw the future.

“You can have this,” Akira had said to him at the beginning of their relationship, in the days before they came home to each other. Akira had been glued to his side, face buried into the crook of his neck. He spoke to his pulse point, “Let yourself have this.”

So Goro let himself step back from his memories and sink into the present once more, turning as best as he could on his side to hold Akira. Closing his eyes and letting sleep become more friend than foe, Akechi Goro relearns love every day.

**Author's Note:**

> i meant to do most if not all of this weeks prompts but well. you know  
title from taxi cab by 21p i don't wanna talk about it


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